Shortly after Barack Obama was elected president and before he took office, he and key members of his transition team were vulnerable. Unknowingly, they were walking right into wiretaps of now imprisoned IL Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was under federal investigation for trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat (Obama’s).

This operation was overseen by the George W. Bush Department of Justice.

Had GWB and his brass determined Barack Obama was a threat to the Republic, he could have actively tried to ensnare Obama in the trap using some phony pretense. He could have sent government spies to gather information. He could have ordered FBI agents to amble over to the transition office to chat with Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett and other key Obama figures, and try to catch them in a lie.

He could have leaked some of the damning results to the press and put the entire incoming administration under an ethical cloud.

But guess what? Bush’s DOJ, instead of pressing forward, pulled the plug on the Blagojevich investigation and arrested him Dec. 9, 2008. The stated reason was concern that Blagojevich would actually award a tainted U.S. Senate nomination (Obama’s seat) that would be hard to pull back. Another factor, and perhaps the main reason, is that the wiretaps were threatening to singe Obama’s team.

In other words, Bush protected the legitimacy of Obama’s election by protecting him from a legal scandal. The exact opposite of what Obama’s DOJ did to the incoming Trump administration.

Obama’s DOJ and national security apparatus put Trump campaign and other officials under investigation in 2016 based on an unproven and absurd opposition research smear “dossier” paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Despite massive efforts, law enforcement and the anti-Trump media still haven’t verified any of the document’s main assertions.

On the way out the door, Obama also laid ever trap he could — declassifying documents, ratcheting up the largely phony Russia narrative, sending FBI agents to trap incoming Trump officials days after he took office, and leaking nearly every document in Washington to his obedient, incurious lapdogs in the press.

Meanwhile, Bush’s DOJ backed off and spared Obama. But the heat was so close that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald interviewed Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and Valerie Jarrett in mid-December 2018, a bit of news probably less than 1 percent of Americans know about. Despite dogged efforts by Judicial Watch, reports from those interviews remain sealed by the DOJ. Also, curiously, the Chicago Tribune refuses to release audio of the Blagojevich wiretaps it appears to possess, maybe because they are embarrassing to Obama.

After all, Obama had talked to a key union official on election night who promised to relay BO’s preference that Blagojevich appoint Jarrett to his Senate seat. Emanuel talked to Blagojevich directly multiple times. The incoming White House attorney produced a laughably flimsy report “clearing” all Obama officials of wrongdoing and that was good enough for the Obama-adoring press, which dropped the matter forever.

Keep in mind that although the public didn’t know about the wiretaps, it knew that Blagojevich was heavily under an expansive federal corruption investigation that likely was going to indict the flamboyant governor. So, Obama was negotiating for a valuable Senate seat for his good friend Valerie Jarrett with a man that his incoming DOJ was about to indict. A minefield of quid pro quo opportunities, indeed, and one that Obama never should have gone anywhere near.

But, as usual, a minefield that Obama walked right through without scrutiny.

Eight years later, Obama showed none of the class and decency Bush had bestowed on him. Bush didn’t try to undo the will of the people by corruptly contorting the nation’s legal and national security machinery to undo the results of an election. Obama did just that.

Such an obvious abuse of power can only survive with a corrupt liberal press, which pretends the above events never happened even though we all witnessed them.

The following outline, I trust, will not be followed by the Cardinals front office in the coming weeks. Nonetheless, this is my conception of how the team should be reshaped. This assumes the Cardinals will not go after Giancarlo Stanton. I know some in the St. Louis and national media believe the Cardinals will be serious suitors for the slugger. However, I doubt the FO will want to swallow $200 million to $295 million in one gulp.

Objective 1

Reshape roster so Cards are positioned to compete for NL Central and win 90+ games.

Objective 2

Maintain vast majority of young pitching prospects — the Cards only current strategic advantage.

Objective 3

Retool everyday core lineup to get younger, more left-handed hitting, more athletic and more defensively proficient.

Trade Fowler. I know he has a no-trade but I guarantee he’ll agree to go someplace. Will need to eat some salary but need the money to sign free agents and he blocks better defensive players and doesn’t really hit well enough for corner OF.

Trade Carpenter. He is starting to decline and will be 32 next year. Get something for him while he’s still good. Great pickup for certain AL teams.

Sign Eric Hosmer. He’ll be 28 next year so would be getting 4 years younger at 1B. He’s having career year at about .870 OPS and should be a good hitter for three or four years. Winning player.

Trade for Christian Yelich. Cards should pull out the stops to make this happen. He’s a LF hitting OF who can play a good CF or LF. He’ll be 26 next year and is already a low .800 OPS guy who could settle in at .900 during his upcoming peak years.

Those conversations — both audiotapes and transcripts — remain sealed under a federal court order.

But the Tribune long ago obtained a copy of some or all of the sealed material and has been releasing it as it sees fit. It dropped a bomb on Democratic candidate for governor J.B. Pritzker this week, revealing he was wheeling and dealing with Blagojevich in 2008 for various appointments. The story — and audiotape — will undoubtedly hurt Pritzker in the months ahead but what about the other tapes and transcripts, which the Tribune acknowledged it possesses.

Federal law enforcement officials captured the candid talks on secret wiretaps as they investigated Blagojevich and his administration for public corruption in fall 2008. The Tribune obtained the recordings, as well as transcripts of calls to others.

Ironically, Blagojevich and his lawyers have been trying for years to make public the transcripts and recordings, said to be in excess of 500 hours of conversations. Most recently, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2014 declined to unseal the material upon request of Obama DOJ prosecutors. Other non-Tribune media has been rebuffed in its efforts to obtain the sealed wiretap material.

A small fraction of the wiretap material was admitted into evidence in the 2010 and 2011 trials and was released publicly. Blagojevich was convicted of trying to sell Barack Obama’s old Senate seat and of other public corruption counts. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison, which he is serving in Colorado.

The Tribune earlier released another explosive bit of sealed wiretap material that captured Blagojevich saying he believed convicted influence peddler Tony Rezko sent Barack Obama’s 2004 Illinois Senate campaign a $25,000 donation for “street money” that never was disclosed by Obama’s campaign. Obama and Rezko denied the allegation and the Tribune authors’ book says the feds chased down the lead and it came up empty.

It is well documented that Obama’s transition team in 2008 was in direct and indirect contact with Blagojevich during the wiretap period, angling for a Valerie Jarrett Senate appointment at one point, and, later, for other considerations. These conversations were enough to cause the FBI to interview Obama, Emanuel and Jarrett before Obama became president. Judicial Watch is suing to obtain the FBI 302 reports on those interviews.

Why is the Tribune acting as sole judge and jury as to what is in the public interest regarding these conversations? It ought to release all the material and let the public decide. It is both the right thing to do journalistically and economically because the material will generate tons of traffic.

With the public rightly wary of liberal media bias, it is in the Tribune’s best interest to release the material and dispel the notion it might be protecting some powerful Democrats from embarrassment or worse.

We talk a lot about truth these days. A battalion of self-appointed experts ascend to their mesh chairs every morning to point out what is true and what isn’t. Most of these efforts are derailed by sloppiness, ideology and a lack of humility. They ultimately lack authority and further muddy the definition of that elusive truth.

There once was a “fact check” that truly mattered and ended with timeless authority. One that took two years to complete. Done by one of the most outstanding journalists in the country — a hard charging investigator with a Yale law degree.

By 1981, Chicago Tribune Legal Affairs Editor Lee Strobel came to a horrifying conclusion. At least horrifying in the sense he wanted his verdict to come out exactly the opposite. The then-atheist originally thought it would take only a weekend to prove that the central story of Christianity — that Jesus rose from the dead — was a fraud. He undertook the project because he wanted to convince his wife Leslie that her new conversion to Christianity was folly, believing that would restore their lives back to normal. His long weekend turned into a two-year whirlwind of intense research. He ultimately came to the following four core conclusions, based on concrete historical evidence:

Jesus was a real person — FACT.

Jesus was crucified and died on the cross — FACT.

Jesus’ tomb was found empty three days later — FACT.

Jesus rose from the dead and was seen afterwards by more than 500 people — FACT.

When the evidence became overwhelming to him, Strobel realized it would take more faith to remain an atheist. He confessed his sins and accepted God’s grace, becoming a newly minted Christian. Strobel didn’t stop there. He drifted away from journalism into the ministry, becoming a teacher, author of more than 20 books and one of the world’s most important evangelists. His most influential book, “The Case for Christ,” tells the story above in compelling detail. The book has been converted into a major motion picture debuting Friday across the United States.

I mention this story for several reasons. Strobel is a person I aspired to work for many years ago. I was an ambitious investigative reporter at the same newspaper as Lee for a brief time and hoped to one day do great things together as a team. That dream faded when Lee left journalism and I did as well several years later.

But Strobel’s work inspired me and was a factor in my own conversion from fallen Christian to committed follower of Jesus more than two years ago. Nearly every Christian I talk to mentions “The Case for Christ” as a book that either helped establish or maintain their faith. I got a chance to thank Lee in person this weekend when he appeared at the same Chicago area mega-church that forms the central locale for his real-life story and movie. We barely knew each other back then, but we are brothers now and forever.

The most important reason I write this is as an invitation to Christians and non-Christians to see the movie. I particularly hope that my journalist and ex-journalist friends will check it out. From the trailers you can see it is a well-produced, intriguing story that is both a taut tale of investigation and journalism and a personal tale of a family in turmoil. Lee told me that ex-journalists will particularly like the authentic re-creation of newsrooms, circa 1980, with clunky typewriters, cigarette smoking and snarly old-school editors. Strobel said that focus groups reveal that non-Christians like the movie as much as Christians.

No one as talented as Lee Strobel has undertaken a more vigorous “fact check.” We all say we want to follow the facts wherever they might lead. That’s what he did — for two years. It would be difficult to find a more credible truth seeker. Our culture is yearning for what can be found at a movie theater near you this weekend.